


Breathless Stars

by QuarterClever



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fic Exchange, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-05
Updated: 2013-01-05
Packaged: 2017-11-23 03:41:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/617688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuarterClever/pseuds/QuarterClever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompts: breath, stars, final</p><p>There’s no air in the Cage, but Sam keeps breathing anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathless Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inkorstardust](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=inkorstardust).



> Written for a prompt from [inkorstardust](http://inkorstardust.tumblr.com/) (whom I could have sworn was on AO3 but I guess not?) for the 2012 Summer FYSL Hotter than Hell Fanfic Exchange

There’s no air in the Cage. Sam keeps breathing despite that, half out of habit, half out of sheer inability to stop, and half because down here whatever (il)logic makes everything tick also makes three halves a whole and two wrongs a U-turn, so there’s really no reason he can come up with why he can’t survive off air-that’s-not-really-air-at-all anyway.

He keeps breathing, trying not to think about what exactly he’s inhaling when his body isn’t even here anymore. The not-air tastes like sulfur and sin and promise; his lungs feel empty even when he’s sucked in as much as he can. He feels even emptier every time he breathes out, hollow and cold and dark. The flames in the cage burn him frozen; he imagines he can see his breath fogging in front of him, the fire turning the vapors golden (most people think I burn hot. It’s actually quite the opposite).

Lucifer doesn’t need to breathe, the bastard. Sam’s not sure he ever did, not even outside the Cage when he was feeding off his vessel like some sort of particularly vile parasite. But he does, his chest rising and falling.

“Sam,” Lucifer breathes, thumbs―or maybe they’re the tips of wings―reaching out to brush along his cheekbones. He’s right there, too close, face glowing as he breathes in Sam, breathes his name out and HIM in.

“Sam,” Lucifer says again, so much tied up in that one syllable that Sam cringes and his breath skitters out. Lucifer’s eyes widen, pupils blown huge. He inhales like he’s trying to catch a few wisps of some drug Sam knows he hasn’t been smoking. 

He FEELS like he’s on something though, non-existent limbs loose and tired as he just pretends to breathe normally, tries to puzzle out what Lucifer’s expression (eyes closed and one corner of his mouth tilted upward) means. Whatever this thing is, it’s something that clearly affects fallen angels and bodiless humans differently, because while Sam almost feels like he’s detoxing from demon blood all over again, Lucifer’s boiling over with power, like he just sucked down the entire fifth circle of hell and washed it down with a bit of the seventh (That’s good, Sam. You keep fanning that fire in your belly. All that pent up rage? I’m going to need it). 

There’s just so much LUCIFER in the Cage. Michael isn’t much more than an afterthought when Lucifer’s there, a pale moon eclipsed by Lucifer’s sun and a gnat driven away by Lucifer playing the exterminator (though the bites he leaves itch and Sam can’t help but mentally scratch at them, even though he knows it makes Lucifer frown and suddenly be everywhere at once, as if he can make Sam forget about everyone— everything— else just by being LARGE enough). 

He thinks maybe Lucifer wasn’t quite so overwhelming when they first fell into the Cage an eternity of forevers ago, but that could just be because back then he was too busy fighting with Michael. The two acted out their aborted armageddon like they were practicing for when they’d be called on stage for opening night of the apocalypse and closing night of humanity. He knows (hopes) they won’t ever be. Probably.

He knows that if Lucifer keeps his attention fixed more firmly on his vessel than on getting out of the Cage that the locks will hold longer this time, but there doesn’t seem to be anything he can do to keep Lucifer’s too-intense focus off him anyway (and there’s never any guarantee that he isn’t casually chipping away at seals at the same time he’s running greedy fingers all through Sam’s thoughts).

Sam chokes on him, burns from him, but Lucifer never notices (You know I’d never hurt you. Not really). 

“Lucifer,” Sam tries, but the name never comes out quite the way he wants it to. Saying his name never drives him away and Sam can never remember why he thinks it will til it’s already too late and Lucifer’s drawing in even closer (speak of the devil), breathing in his name and Sam all at once. 

“MFEO,” he reminds Sam, twining about him and burning so freezing bright. “Even here, where I don’t need a vessel.”

“I wasn’t— I’m not—” Sam wants to protest even as he curls into Lucifer. The fire burning in his belly wouldn’t do much in a salt and burn of a cursed paperback, much less a fight against the devil. Lucifer just breathes in his protests like he consumes everything else that is Sam. 

“I told you I’d give you everything if only you said yes, and I will. But you, Sam, you’ve done so much more than that.”

“I don’t want anything from you,” Sam tells him because he has to say something and lying about that is better than trying to grapple with the rest of what Lucifer is saying. 

“When you said yes to me—” Sam doesn’t need Lucifer’s grin to hear the pleasure in his voice when he says THAT— “you did more than just become my vessel on Earth, Sammy. You became my own little personal Energizer bunny. My rechargeable, human soul-powered battery.”

Sam thinks about how much brighter Lucifer has been the longer they’ve been in the Cage, remembers Lucifer leaning in too, too close to share Sam’s breath—his SOUL— and feels like a fucking moron for ever thinking he could distract Lucifer from breaking out of the Cage. Saying yes did nothing, NOTHING except for maybe buy Dean a few years. 

“I can’t breathe,” Sam gasps. In the back of his mind, a rational part of his brain is reminding him that if he’s talking he’s breathing well enough, but he can’t stop his not-real fingers from scrabbling at his not-real throat. “No air.” The other part of his mind, the part that sounds like his too much like his father on his worst days, is telling him that if he’s not breathing than his soul’s safe, so buck up. Neither voice helps. 

“Sam.” Lucifer’s tone is infinitely patient. “There’s never been any air.” And Sam knew that, of course, but hearing it out loud was somehow completely different. Sam coughs, his whole self (his whole SOUL, fuck) feeling raw like his throat, but at least he can breathe again. “When I was breathing in your soul, what exactly did you think you were living off of?”

And Sam opens his mouth to answer with what he knows will be a lie before he can even think of what to say, but then Death, of all things is there, talking about Walls and Dean, and Lucifer is screaming, clutching at him with wings and nails, and nothing makes sense because why is Death trying to drag him out and why is Lucifer trying to stop him instead of breaking out like Sam’s sure he can and Sam can’t THINK and he’s trying to remember why it’s important that he breathe or not breathe which was it and there’s so much light, so bright, Lucifer shining fiercer than Sam has ever seen but he’s not even sure if he remembers seeing him shine like that before but he’s pretty sure he would because everything is white with his light and his burning cold rage. 

“Don’t worry, Sammy, I’ll find you soon. I’m just as much a part of you as you are a part of me. After all, you were breathing me in too.”

——-

Sam wakes up, surprised that he’s breathing. He’s not sure why he’s more about that than he is that he’s waking up at all (he’s never managed the latter without the former, after all), but then again he doesn’t know how he got to the panic room either or what happened after the little he remembers from Stull Cemetery, so he tries not to let it bother him. It’s like there’s something stopping him from remembering though, and it itches. He doesn’t want to scratch (bad things happen when he does, he remembers that much) but it ITCHES. 

He scratches at it. Nothing happens though. There’s no sudden, overwhelming presence. There’s no explosions or monsters popping out of the ceiling. When he rolls over, there’s no previously unsensed presence suddenly staring at him from where they’re stretched out beside him. He’s not disappointed, he’s just surprised because it wasn’t what he expected. That’s why he scratches again just to make sure. And keeps scratching. 

When Lucifer shows up months later, when he’s still scratching at the wall that doesn’t actually exist anymore, he can’t say he’s surprised. Mostly he’s just relieved. For the first time since he took that last, bracing breath and plunged into the Cage he feels like he can finally BREATHE again.

**Author's Note:**

> The basic idea for this fic came from half-remembered astronomy lessons from middle school science. I’m not a scientist, but the basic idea is that stars that are dying off and are in binary systems can start [stealing hydrogen](http://www.physics.smu.edu/jcotton/ph1311/ch12b.htm) from their partners, [glowing brighter and brighter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_Ia_supernova). Sometimes this leads to a regular nova and sometimes a supernova, I guess. But I’ve always liked the idea that when angels fall stars die/go supernova, and I think it ties in really well with the idea of their grace being ripped out. So I thought that maybe Lucifer could be gaining some of his grace/power back from his connection to Sam and his soul. Yay terribly inaccurate science!


End file.
